


邪道 | subject to change

by lamniform



Category: Spectrobes
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Character(s), Alien Culture, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Physical Abuse, Redemption, Science Fiction, Verbal Abuse, Villains to Heroes, flawed relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28915626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamniform/pseuds/lamniform
Summary: Jado (barely) survives his encounter with the legendary spectrobe Kaio, and follows the members of the Nanairo Planetary Patrol, who had brought it upon him, back to their home solar system. The alien joins his former enemies as a part of the NPP, and finds himself partnered with an officer called Scanner Teak._Putting my "Jado lives"-AU into words! Normally I write my stories to completion before I post them, but idc in this case, so tags and warnings will change with more character appearances. You probably saw all the abuse warnings I've already put into the tags. These do NOT apply to the chapters I have posted so far, but there will be abusive behavior and recounts of abusive behaviour in this story, as Scanner Teak is not a good person, so be aware of that before getting into this story. I'll edit this description as soon as the warnings actually start applying and will give a warning at the start of affected chapters.No proofreading. I let my readers suffer because you're strong and hot and can handle the pain
Comments: 3
Kudos: 2





	1. goodbye to Kaio

Fog had fallen over the meadows of Wyterra’s sacred mountain. For any traveler who stood on top of Mt. Awakening, it would seem as if the land was covered in clouds that had taken to rest on its Earth, the troughs like beds for the collections of gaseous moisture. It was the break of dawn, and the sun was shining just enough light over the landscape for this play of the elements to be seen.

The traveler who was lying on the leeward side of a different nearby mountain, though, had little capacity to appreciate the scene.

The person roused to consciousness as the brightness that surrounded him increased, then fell back into a trance, then came back just a little bit. The cycle repeated itself for an indefinite number of times. Wildlife didn’t dare thread close to the figure. The pungent smell emanating from it kept an undisturbed perimeter around him. It meant that no harm would come to him – if any animal could even do damage to a krawl – but also got rid of potential wake-up calls. Nonetheless, eventually, he raised his head and looked, at his surroundings, barely.

Jado’s body had remained only partly in shape. Normally resembling a tall human in all proportions, his limbs and part of his torso were flowing apart. The clothes he had worn previously to the fight he’d been in had been torched, vaporized in the stratosphere. His complexion, normally black and blue, had lost all its colour. Gone was the blue, replaced by grey. One didn’t have to know about krawl physiology to interpret his condition as sickly.

His eyes didn’t do him much of a service when it came to assessing the situation. Their communication with his brain was too sluggish. Despite it, his instinctual response set in, a subconscious need for preservation. He dragged an arm forward, the biomass coated the earth it slid over before collecting to the spot where it should be, followed in its example by the next arm, and pulled himself towards the downward slope of the mountainside. Once in motion, he more and more turned to amorphousness, the state krawl tended to be in. It was easier for travel. The blob of cytosol and fumes moved towards the closest civilization it knew of.

_

Commander Grant, leader of the Nanairo Planetary Patrol, heaved a sigh as he let himself drop into the driver’s sit of his spaceship. Junior officers Rallen and Jeena had taken place in the passenger seats behind him, Rallen with his child spectrobe Komainu in his lap. The re-awakened fossil enjoyed an enthusiastic petting from its owner, who was visibly happy with the situation. Jeena’s expression betrayed a similar happiness, although she seemed more subdued, more collected, as she always was in comparison to her work partner. Grant turned the ship’s ignition key.

“Hey, Commander?” The male voice from behind addressed him.

“Yes, Rallen?”

“Do you think we’ll be able to visit Kaio again? Make a space portal on purpose?”

Grant pondered this. His eyes left the controls laid out in front of him to instead look through the window, to watch the people standing there, in wait for the ship to leave. His old friend Kamtoga, someone who he had thought he would never see again. Gretta, the village chief who he had had a few… curious run-ins with, but never had had the time to really befriend. Radese, the Wyterra village chief who used to be so much younger when Grant had first been stranded in the Kaio system. Several civilians who had remembered Grant.

Kamtoga shot him a smile once he realized Grant was surveying them. The normally stern-faced man returned the smile. “I hope so.” His face turned back to the controls, and he flipped the switches necessary for take-off. “But, as you are aware, there is currently no method to travel such long distances reliably. We don’t know how to create portals, neither for short nor long distance travel.”

“Well, we should find out how to make them!” Rallen wailed.

“The chances are slim.” That was Grant’s end to the conversation. Rallen went on to make more arguments and theories on the topic, but the Commander only took in a fraction of it. His focus was put on lifting the ship’s body off of Wyterra’s earth, and throwing one last glimpse on his friends and acquaintances at home in the Kaio system. He raised a hand to wave at them, a gesture followed by Rallen and Jeena, and mirrored by most of the people in the crowd outside.

“We’ll miss you guys, stay safe!”, “Goodbye everyone, take care of yourselves!” the Junior officers said, while the lips of their friends on the other side of the window moved to make similar goodbye wishes. Neither of them could hear each other, and they’d already made their goodbyes earlier, but they still did it.

The Commander tore his eyes away from the sight, and looked in the ship’s trajectory. The space vessel rose slowly at first, getting enough distance between itself and the ground for not damaging any plants or people before speeding up incrementally, shooting for the clouds, and soon after, the stars.

_

The flight back home was uneventful. The only chance of a problem the crew had dreaded a little was the possibility that the portal to Nanairo could have vanished, but it was still there. The wormhole was full of meteorites and turbulences, but the Commander was an excellent flyer, so it posed no problem. Rallen was quietly in awe at his skill, mostly because he had never really thought about whether or not his Commander was good at basic aspects of an NPP job. The only context from which he knew Grant was as a superior from which he received orders and reported to. Seeing Grant outside of the command center was rare, and usually spelled trouble. Rallen found a lot to think about while sunken into his seat. Generally, it was a very quiet travel. The were all exhausted. The junior officers had spent weeks fending off alien invaders from an entire solar system, and while Grant’s part in the mission had been shorter, it had been a long time since he’d done so much field work, and he was, admittedly, breaching the territory of being ‘old’. His hair was already grey.

It didn’t need to be stated among them, they’d all appreciate getting some rest, and entering back into the Nanairo system, and closing in on their home planet Kollin, did produce relieved sighs.

_

“Thanks for the ride home, Commander.” The boy said after getting off the ship. Grant nodded in response.

“Sir,” Jeena joined the barely-a-conversation, her face tired. “Would it be permissible that we don’t make our reports right away?”

Grant paused for a moment, staring at her with his unreadable face. While he hadn’t forgotten about the need for a thorough report, he did, in fact, not expect one right away. “Of course. Get some rest for now.” He did know most of what had happened himself anyway, so if questions were to come up in the meantime, before the reports were made and archived, he could answer them. Alas, he also had a report to file. Thinking of it, he had to suppress a yawn in front of his subordinates.

“Thank you, Commander.” Jeena gave a nod, then looked at Rallen.

Rallen, Komainu in his hands, looked at Jeena, then Grant. The tall man had a hand over his mouth, seemingly in thought, which was accurate, but mostly it was to suppress the yawn. “Uhh, dismissed?” Rallen tentatively prodded.

“Dismissed.” The man confirmed.

With that, the youngsters scurried off, and Grant took in a big breath, sighed, then actually yawned, and checked if his spaceship was locked again before heading off in his own direction.


	2. stowaway

“Don’t you think there’s something wrong with the Commander’s ship?”

“What?” Rudy had been on shift to clean the space vessels parked in Hangar 5 with some guy he hadn’t worked with before. The tall bearded man had already voiced his suspicions about the ship for the fourth time. “You know, I heard you loud and clear when you said that for the first time.”

“And you really don’t think so?”

“Well, no. I told you. I just don’t get what you think is wrong with it.” Rudy knelt back down to the cleaning equipment to get it back to the storage room.

“It stinks.”

He looked back up. “What?”

“The ship, there’s this gross smell around it.” All the while, Rudy’s colleague was watching the ship in question, as if it would provide him the answers to his questions eventually, despite being an inanimate object with which he’d spent the last few hours in the same hall with.

That made the smaller man actually consider the claim. “Uhh…,” He got up and walked to where the other one was standing, now looking at the ship too. “Does it still smell? Could be any kind of space debris, or a chemical reaction giving it an off-odour.”

“No, that’s not it. It’s like… organic. Can’t you smell it? Come on.” The man stepped into the ship’s direction while turning around to face the other and gave him a wave to follow. He complied.

Rudy didn’t have a good sense smell, and he hadn’t gotten this close to it before then because his colleague had cleaned it, but once standing right next to the craft, he could see – smell – the point. His colleague waved some of the air from the ship into his face, to make sure he really smelled it or something. He slapped his hands away. “I get it, I get it. I can smell it.”

They both stood there for a bit, watching, until the tall guy covered his nose with the cloth fabric around his neck.

“Yeah, so… what do we do?” Rudy asked.

“No clue.”

There wasn’t really much they could do. They were just on cleaning duty. “Report to the Commander? It’s his ship after all.” Normally information like this, as weird as it was despite the seeming mundanity of being about ‘bad smell’, would be directed at Hangar oversight, which would probably have a look at the ship and see where to take it from there.

“Nah, man, that dude scares me.” He walked forward, still covering his nose with one hand, towards the ship’s entry hatch. “I cleaned all of the hull, didn’t leave a nook dirty, so it needs to come from inside, right?” He checked whether it was locked. He climbed on top to check the windows’ stability.

Rudy stiffened in his tracks and gave the other an utterly unimpressed glare. “Hey, I forgot your name, I am NOT breaking into the Commander’s ship.”

“Come on,” he felt around the windows’ embedding to see how they might come loose. “if we remove some glass and put it back in afterwards, no one’s going to notice.”

“That’s a safety hazard for the next flight.” Rudy pointed an accusatory finger and the man perched on top of the ship, despite him not facing him. “Plus, what if something IS wrong inside? How do we explain having found out what’s wrong, when the ship was locked?” Beard-man peeked down at him.

“Unlock it from inside, once we’re in?”

Did spaceships have a function for that? He knew next to nothing about the ships in use for the NPP. He lowered his finger. The finger shot right back up once he started barking again. “Still! Safety hazard. Do you want the Commander to – I don’t know. – die on his next flight? Have the vacuum of space suck out a loose window next time he’s out there?”

His colleague stopped his prodding and knocking and gave off a low murmur. Silently, he slipped off the vessel. “Guess you’re right. That would be pretty shitty.” ‘Even if the guy’s creepy.’ went unspoken.

Rudy let out a breath of relief, his face exasperated. The guy he’d been stuck with this shift really turned out to be kind of a ditz in his opinion. They put their equipment into storage and left the hangar.

_  
Inside of the ship, a puddle had formed. The black liquid originated from the navigation console, a device containing all the detailed space maps known to Nanairans, used for calculating space travel routes and built in as a part of the steering console.

The spread had begun not long after the ship had reached Kollin from its journey from Kaio. It was the silence of no one being on board that wiped away Jado’s instinct to compose himself. Not that he much noticed. He had spent his journey from the mountain to the ship, and his game of hide-don’t-seek inside the console, in a delirious state. He’d gone through with this plan on mostly autopilot, because hiding inside mechanical devices was a trick he’d pulled off before. None of what he was doing that moment – namely, flowing apart at all seams – was by his own conscious decision. His body’s integrity was too low to even pull himself together for long if he were conscious. Fumes emitting from his body filled the compartment.

The ship hatch was ripped open and its stairs hit the hangar floor with a sharp metallic thud. Commander Grant strode into the vessel, tissue covering his nose, and expression stern – sterner than usual. Two cleaning personnel men stood on the edge of the entrance. They exchanged glances, mutually wondering whether they should follow their commander or not, and both confused about the sudden worsening of his serious attitude as soon as he took in the odd smell of his ship.

All things considered, Grant was a fool for barging in without any weapons. He knew it was the stench of wounded krawl, and he fully expected that some krawl had followed him and his officers back home. If they were to escape, they could potentially spread, which could lead to another invasion. But, unbeknownst to most people, Grant had many moments where he acted despite knowing it was best not to. It was a side effect of being in a high-ranking position. He felt too safe.

Given the small size of the spaceship’s interior, it only took him a few steps forward before he already almost stepped into the source of the smell. Grant recoiled, taking a step back and staring at the puddle laid out in front of him. He surveyed the rest of the room with quick glances. There was nothing beside this puddle, but it had filled most of the floor. It poured down from the console beside the pilot’s seat, where it had signs of corrosion on the metal. Grant raised his left arm, where his communication radio was installed on his armor.

“Rallen,” he called through the device. The junior officer was one of the few people he called directly when needed, due to his special position among the NPP as a spectrobes expert. “Get to Hangar 5 immediately. There is a krawl threat.” His order was brisk and so was the affirmative reply from the other end.

It wasn’t long before several people had gathered at the scene. First Rallen, followed shortly by Jeena, and then various scientists. Rudy and his colleague were dismissed somewhere in the middle of it. Commander Grant’s initial fear of a krawl escaping into the environment seemed unwarranted, as the thing didn’t move whatsoever. Everyone present consulted on what do to with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you like it, if you have critique on what to improve about my writing please comment that thx uu


	3. back to consciousness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're exiting the set-up phase with this chapter, babes

He opened his eyes. It was white.

It was a white room. His eyes dropped in and out of focus, but he understood that he was inside this room with walls covered in white plating. The light above was bright. There were no shadows he could see, because there was no furniture, not in his line of sight. He raised an arm.

The arm was human in shape, as it should be. He held it stretched out for a while, just hovering his hand at the furthest point away from him he could have it, reaching out, but not reaching out for anything. He watched his arm. The lines were grey, but that observation didn’t register as an active thought.

Jado withdrew his arm, and closed his eyes

-  
It took more weeks – time that Jado couldn’t measure – before he could make a coherent assessment of his situation. It started with him monitoring the room in more detail by moving his head, which was hard to do at first, as all of his movement was extremely sluggish. There wasn’t anything of interest beside the door and the simple cot he was lying on. At some point he managed to sit up. It was a better position to look at himself in. His body had almost fully reformed. Most notable beside the lack of colour was its simple shape. There were barely any shadows swishing from him. It was to be expected. His mind was recovering, and it became easier to piece together what had happened, and why he looked the way he did.

He was attacked, badly injured, and his body lost the integrity necessary to uphold his normal appearance.

He didn’t know what he’d done to end up in this place, he just had a hunch. It was a simple hunch to come to, really. Going off of his last clear memory of right before the legendary spectrobe’s attack hit, he asked himself ‘What would I, Jado, do after surviving the impact?”. Well, the hunch might not have been that clear-cut.

The standard answer would be ‘Find Master Krux.’. He didn’t go find Master Krux. This place was nowhere a place that his Master would call a part of his plans. It didn’t look like it had affiliation with him. There was something nagging at the back of Jado’s mind about the idea of reuniting with Krux.

The next potential answer was ‘Remain where you are until you recover.’. He obviously didn’t do that either. There was a chance of someone finding him where he’d ended up after the attack, and then put him into this room, but that answer didn’t feel right. He might not remember anything precisely, but he had his hunches of what felt current and what didn’t.

The answer that felt the truest to reality was that he had actively pursued getting close to humans, specifically the ones who had unleashed the attack on him. He was still sifting through and organizing the instincts that had caused him to make that action, but even without being sure on his reasons, this felt like it was what had happened. The room fit the look of a place that would be under Nanairo Planetary Patrol jurisdiction, even if a bit simple. He’d seen their architecture.

His assumptions were confirmed when the room’s door was first opened. A person dressed in NPP uniform walked inside. Jado was sitting on the cot, turned in the exit’s direction, with a leg pulled to his chest and an arm resting on its knee. The person had a notepad and pen in hand, and pulled in a chair behind them. They set it down at a fair distance away from him, but not as far away as they could have.  
“Hello.” They spoke after sitting down.

Jado watched them for a moment, then tilted his head. He wasn’t sure if he should reply. He slightly parted his lips without the intention to speak, but after a bit longer he replied. His voice was low and lacked inflection. “Hello.” It was more of a question than a statement.

They noted something down on their notepad. The krawl assumed it was about his voice. He internally cursed how weak it sounded. They then looked back up at him. “I’ve been informed your name is Jado. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

They didn’t note that down. They instead flipped to a different page of the booklet and skimmed over what was assumably written on it. “There are a few questions we would like to ask you.”

“We?” Jado was already sure that this was set up by the NPP, but he wanted that confirmation. Perhaps even information of who exactly of the NPP was holding an interest in his person.

The person watched him as they thought about whether or not to answer this question, purely because it didn’t sit right with them that he was asking questions. They could refuse on the basis that they were the only one asking questions for now. “Nanairo Planetary Patrol. You are under our surveillance.” This information was a part of the series of events they had to reconstruct during their questioning anyway. Jado gave them a nod.

They continued. “You’re aware that you are under placed under constraint in a human facility, are you?”

Jado cleared him throat with a cough. “I have concluded as much.”

“Do you remember how that has come to be?”

“No.” It was genuine. His hunches about what he would do in a situation like this prevailed, but he had no idea what had actually happened. He followed the Nanairans and ended up in their solar system, somehow. That was all he knew.

His interrogator made more notes before going on. “Nothing at all?” He shook his head. “You were found on one of our ships returning from the Kaio system. Does that ring any bells?”

“The Kaio system is my last recollection of my location.” He concurred. “Wyterra.”

“I see.” They noted that down. “No memory apart from that? Any of this location here?”

“No.” He shook his head once more. “Only this room.”

They gave him a grumble of acknowledgement as they looked over their pre-prepared notes. They looked back up at him, an eyebrow raised. The way they emphasized their words made their interest in his answer evident. “Why did you come here?”

Jado couldn’t help himself. His mouth drew into a wide, toothy grin. “If I knew.”

The interrogation didn’t last much longer. There wasn’t much you could ask a person who didn’t remember anything.

-  
The person who conducted the initial questioning was the start of many more visits Jado received. The next one who’d walked through his door had been the Commander, then the Commander with the Spectrobe Masters in tow, then the old man who used to be a Spectrobes Master. Inbetween those there were various visits of scientists, with and without the Commander. The encounters were quite bizarre, really. It had been established that Jado had no idea what was going on beside that he’d been attacked and had followed his attackers without any intent to get back at them for it. It was surprising to himself that looking at these humans didn’t fill him with any anger. He couldn’t even blame it on his weakened state, as he had recovered enough to feel emotions quite well. Despite it, he felt very placid in their presence. Since they couldn’t get any answers from him, the visits felt more like friendly chats than attempts at figuring out the krawl’s intentions.

Rallen was the one who dropped the obvious question. “So why’re you here? Why didn’t you go looking for Krux?” He was lounging on a chair close enough to Jado’s cot to allow him to rest a foot on the edge of the basic bed. The pose really spoke for how secure the young man felt in this interaction with a supposed enemy.

This was a question Jado’s thoughts had been circling around. There were both easy and complicated answers to it. He tried to derail the bluntness of Rallen’s approach. “Krux? What about him?”

The man lowered his foot back to the floor and leaned forward, resting his lower arms on his lap, to get his face closer to Jado and look at him intently. “Krux, everything about him. Don’t tell me you forgot about how much of a boot-licker you are to that guy. I’m saying it’s weird as all that you came crawling to us instead of him.” Jado snarled at the insinuation that the ‘came crawling to the NPP’.

“Do not speak of me as if I’m anyone’s wounded pet.” He countered in warning.

Rallen didn’t move or say anything. With a frown he continued to watch the person in front of him, waiting for his question to be answered. Jado returned the frown, but with the way his eyes were positioned sideways in his skull, the expression lacked the air of seriousness Rallen managed. His toothy scowl was a better indicator of what he was feeling.

The alien had to weigh his coming words carefully. Not for the human; for himself. It was a personal subject. “Why would I return to him? Was it not him who ordered my demise?” His facial expression remained, but instead of scowling at Rallen’s insulting way to speak of him, it turned to be about Krux’s decisions. Despite himself, he couldn’t suppress the hurt he felt. “Supposed to be dust! Mingled with his enemies, of undifferentiated insignificance.” He mocked the flowery words he’d last heard from Krux. ‘What a FOOL. A fool even bigger than I.’ he added in thought with the self-restraint he had to not speak it out loud.

Rallen’s expression changed to a lighter one. Jado couldn’t exactly read it. “Huh.”

“What?” The other rasped, still in the process of dampening the outburst he wished to have if it wouldn’t hurt his dignity.

The junior officer shifted his weight and arms to lean back a bit. “I never expected you of all people to agree that Krux is bad.”

Jado still scowled. “He is a fool…” He muttered, unable to fully keep that statement to himself. It wasn’t an agreement on him being ‘bad’.

Throughout the entire exchange, Jeena had been sitting on a second chair not far beside Rallen’s. She had her legs crossed and a glass of water in her hands while she quietly took in the scene in front of her. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the talking parties. She had some thoughts about the matter at hand but didn’t voice them. Rallen, too, looked like he had a lot going through his head, but didn’t get into it. In his case, his thoughts were too jumbled up to know where to start.

The junior officers parted from Jado not long after. Shortly after the light turned off. The staff had kindly heard the krawl’s request to get rid of the room’s brightness when there were no visitors. After all, he was a creature that didn’t do well under bright illumination.

_  
The visits helped Jado’s internal clockwork start running again. The conversations they came with forced him to think, for without thinking he couldn’t answer them, and it forced him to translate vague thoughts and feelings he had into concrete words.

At the start of him – conscious – stay, he hadn’t thought about his situation much. His mind had been more vacant, still stepping out of the haze he’d been in for… a long time. He had yet to ask for information on how long he’d been in NPP custody. As time progressed, more questions popped into his head. The one question that gained the most prominence, soon after it first posed itself, was “What now?”.

The former High-Krawl hadn’t fully recovered yet. It was evident in his colourless appearance. But, he could stand, walk, talk just fine. There was no telling how good his endurance was, as the room was tiny, so chances were that if he were to walk a while, his endurance would be quickly depleted, but staying on his legs without feeling faint was no longer a problem. Given all that, his contentment with being locked in a tiny room was diminishing. It had been very tolerable for sitting out his recovery, but that was reaching its end.  
Exiting his vegetative state, Jado had to ask himself what he wanted to do.

His allegiance with Krux had been broken. It was a choice he had already made through his instinctual actions, as the conversation with Rallen made him realize. He didn’t crawl back to Krux, instead, he fled. This action lead him to choose the organization that had risen as his master’s number one enemy as a good entity to give chase to. It turned out to be a good choice so far, as they gave him shelter to recover in, as bare bones as their care was. They had yet to realize that he had been inadvertently ablating the cell walls because they hadn’t provided him with any form of sustenance, which could be both organic and inorganic matter for krawl.

All things considered, the choice he was to make seemed like it should feel a lot harder to make than it did.

During one of the regular check-ups on him, he requested for Commander Grant to pay him a visit. He said he had something important to ask, and the staff member followed up to his request by calling Grant after she left. He couldn’t come right away, but later in the day Jado’s door opened again.

The light flickered on as the Commander entered.

Standing a short distance away from Jado, the man shifted into a common stance for him, upright, hands behind his back, a posture as stern as his facial expression tended to be. “You requested to meet me. What is the reason?” His tone wasn’t accusatory, nor brash in any other way, but it also didn’t thread into the territory of curiosity. He was really good at obscuring his emotions behind a façade.

Jado was sitting on the edge of his bed. He leaned forward and had his elbows resting on his legs. He cupped one hand in the other, rubbing his fingers over his knuckles in thought as he watched the human. He had had ample time to consider his words and had concluded that there was no use for a complicated explanation right away. “Let me be blunt. I want to be an asset to your organization.”

Grant frowned. “As in?”

“’As is?’ what? You can’t claim that you can’t get numerous ideas for using me off of the top of your head.” He gestured his hands at Grant. “… My only demand is that I can get back at Krux for what he did to me.” This was the NPP. They were the first humans to manage protecting their home from Krux’s invasions and had successfully driven him off.

“Ah.” Grant let out as a sound of understanding as he closed his eyes and lowered his eyes.

Jado blinked in surprise. It was an expression he hadn’t seen the commander make. “What?”

He raised his head again. “Krux was killed in Kaio. You have not been informed on this.”

Jado flinched. The confusion was evident on his face. Then, though, his mouth curled into a tentative grin. “You can’t truly believe that?” The grin became a full one. “Krux? Killed?” As unexpectedly as it had risen, the smile fell. “Tell me how.”

After some consideration, Grant relayed the events to him. Jado couldn’t help but marvel at the gullibility of humans.


	4. slow progress

The clacking of their footsteps echoed through the hallways of the NPP side building. Jado followed shortly behind Rallen as they made their way to the training room. The place was an alternative for when the main building’s training areas were overcrowded, but, currently, entry had been purposefully denied to most NPP members. Jado’s presence was to be kept under wraps until the involved parties were fully convinced he had no ill intent.

Unlike the past months that he’d spent naked in his cell – something of no issue to a krawl, even if humanoid in appearance –, Jado wore clothing as well. It was a uniform he had been given at the start of his enrollment into the planetary patrol. It lacked the NPP emblem, as he had yet to be official, and lacked the sheets of armor that were on the uniforms of the people who surrounded him, but it was easy to tell his allegiance anyway. The simplicity was partly of his own request, and he didn’t need and would be hindered by the weapons devices typically attached to the uniform’s forearms, and other plating would get into the way of his non-human movements as well. And, … he didn’t think he needed the protection. His vanity had been creeping back into him with his increasing health. This left him with the regular black officer shirt and leggings, a collarless jacket free of plating, and lightly plated boots.

The two of them held some small talk while walking. 

“Just you watch, your face’ll eat dirt just like last time. Gorberus might not be as fast as Gekikuri, but it hits just as hard.” Rallen had his face held high with a smug grin on it. Their sparring sessions so far had been predominantly ending in the favour of him and his spectrobes, much to Jado’s dismay. Even still, the krawl felt an unspoken spark of gratitude for the fact that the human wasn’t going easy on him. That would disgust him.

“So you once more decide to not fight me directly? Cowardly.” He jabbed. He meant the question, and his delivery was deadpan, but there was a playfulness to the mocking that Rallen had been growing acquainted to over the week they’d been training together.

Rallen wagged a finger without looking at him. “Nuh-uh. We’re saving the best for another time. You’re not near anywhere strong enough to just face me.” He knew the former High-Krawl would kick his ass if they were in a one-on-one fight, but he would probably agree to that fight somewhere down the line. He didn’t even have Kaio’s spectrobes-based weapons anymore. Nanairo’s weapon technology was abysmal against krawl compared to those.

Jado let out a drawn-out sigh. “I worry for your trustworthiness, kid, but sure.” His words were back to having his normal inflection, changing between high and low notes in a slightly exaggerated manner when compared to other people. With health, came vanity, came the conceited way of speaking.  
“Hey,” Rallen turned to shoot him a glare. “I told you to not call me that. I’m not a kid.”

“Right, it slips my mind.” He wanted to add ‘with that face of yours’, but suppressed it. “Remind me, what was your age again?”

Rallen groaned. “It’s 21. Are you sure hitting your head didn’t give you memory problems?”

“I-“ Jado wanted to protest that he didn’t hit his head when he crashed onto Wyterra, but he had no idea how he’d landed! Maybe he did go head-first. His face scrunched at the idea of Rallen being correct. He didn’t have any memory problems, though. He’d remembered that Rallen’s age was 20-something. Surely forgetting the rest was within the realm of regular forgetfulness. … Right? He ignored the topic. “21 years of age sounds incredibly young to me. Are you sure you’re not within childhood range?”

“You’re messing with me.” Jado was messing with him. “How old are you, huh?” Rallen countered.

The krawl snorted. “You think we had calendars where I come from?” They did in fact not have calendars where Jado came from.

Rallen disgruntledly accepted that answer and didn’t continue prodding, but only because they reached the training room. He would ask Jado where exactly that place was that he’d come from another time.

The door slid open and they got inside. Jado didn’t stop at the door and continued walking towards the middle of the room, while Rallen paused for a moment to look at the place. It was brightly lit through sunlight that came in through windows in the ceiling. It looked more like an indoors park, with the grass that had been planted, but a good chunk of it was just dirt. Plenty of different shoeprints were embedded in the latter, speaking for the room’s use. There were a few craters in the earth ground and chunks chipped off of the walls, which had to be ascribed to Rallen’s spectrobes and Jado. A short “Heh.” escaped the officer as he looked at the damage, and he scratched the back of his head. Even if it was a sheepish gesture, he wasn’t exactly remorseful for what he was seeing. He then moved on to join up with the other. Before even reaching the krawl, Rallen was tapping away at his prizmod.

“Ready?” The younger of the two called shortly after coming to a halt some distance away from Jado.

He summoned his shadow and cracked his knuckles. His recovery was still in process, which just like the loss of his strength had been in his total lack of colour, was visible through the return of blue lines to his skin. They weren’t as numerous or vibrant as the symbols that used to paint him, but spoke for an improvement. Despite this, his fighting ability was stunted. He couldn’t morph into a proper fighting form – not his original tree-trunk like appearance, and of course not the three-handed giant –, so he had to make do with what he could manage. “Of course.” This said, his humanoid form dissolved and took a shape very similar to his shadow’s. The only difference were the blue lines that carried over from his humanoid shape.

Rallen released his spectrobe. Gorberus was a small spectrobe when compared to some other tertiary forms under its owner’s command. Its movement was more fluid than would be expected from its machine- or statue-like look. It was an effect caused by its grey colour and its rectangular main body. In truth, it did a great job at flinging this rectangle around with its four legs. It was like an odd mix between a big cat and a lizard. Rallen wondered if Jado had ever seen big cats and lizards. He pushed the thought aside in favour of fighting.

“Alright then!” The officer said as he thrusted his fist into his other hand’s palm. “Let’s go, Gorberus! Iku ze!”

Jado wondered about why Rallen always said ‘Iku ze’ before a fight, until he had to dodge the bright beam Gorberus shot out of its mouth.

_

More weeks passed. Jado’s time was spent alternating between training with Rallen and lessons with Professor Wright. These latter lessons consisted of a wide array of topics. Wright had agreed to be the one who introduced Jado to human culture and the NPP’s inner workings. Doing this put a good chunk of his fossil research on ice for the time being, but with his helpful nature and the fact that the NPP trusted him a lot, he had offered doing it. Introducing the presence of a krawl among the public’s midst – one with human-level intelligence no less – would be a complicated matter. It was Wright’s job to give Jado all the theoretical knowledge of casual human life in Nanairo he could think of, so the krawl could somewhat act in a manner that would throttle the freak-out. Getting to know Jado over the course of their weeks together, Wright got the feeling that some of Jado’s freak-out-fuel they could never get rid of.

Inside an otherwise empty meeting room, the two men sat across from each other on a table, various sheets of paper were scattered in front of them, with the folders they’d been taken from set to Wright’s side. The professor was staring at Jado after the alien had said something. Jado stared back. Bright sunlight marked the window’s silhouette on the floor beside them, but they sat out of the light rays’ reach.

Jado tilted his head downward slightly, eyeing the other. “Did you listen?”

Instead of giving a reply, Wright took a long breath in, and gave a sigh. “Huh? No. I’m sorry, Jado.” He leaned back in his chair. “I was thinking. How will we ever introduce your face to the public?” He made a curt gesture at Jado’s head. Looking at it while they talked, he’d utterly lost his train of thought. Jado’s face was so weird.

The krawl’s shoulders sloughed down at the brutal honesty. He stared at the ceiling in annoyance. What does one even say to that? The quiet sound he made could’ve been either called a growl or a mumble. Still glaring at the ceiling, he replied. “You’re asking me? You humans should be experts on yourself. Make use of your brains. I exist as I do. I can take an even less human-seeming form if you prefer that.”

Wright made a “Hrrrmmm.” sound and frowned. “No, that’s no good.” He cupped his own cheek with a hand, tapping a finger on it. “Unless you can change yourself to look more human-” 

Jado interjected an “I cannot.”

“People have to accept you how you are.” Wright finished. They both paused for a bit.

“I don’t care if people accept me.”

Wright rolled his eyes. “That’s all well and good, Jado, but we care.” Having removed his hand from his face, he pointed at his chest with a thumb. “I’m a scientist. The NPP is a public service organization. If the public freaks out at you existing, we’re hit by the brunt of that. Our funds will be cut and people will be fired from their jobs. Considering my heavy involvement with you here, I’ll probably be fired from my job.” He was met with a blank uncaring stare. He snapped a finger. “We work jobs to get money. We use money to get food. Do you follow?”

“Ah, yes. That.” Jado had yet to grasp human economy.

Wright sighed again and sunk down into his chair. He mustered Jado for a few more moments. The krawl sat there, looking over the class materials laid out in front of him. He wasn’t reading, moreso looking over the pictures and graphs. It was an entirely non-hostile display. Wright didn’t usually have outbursts of concern like this. It was easy for him to forget where Jado had come from and what his past stance towards humanity had been – kill, destroy, chase away, whatever Master says – because of his ‘Go with the flow’ attitude to life. It made his moments of realization all the more shocking when they happened.

Wright shook his head at his own behavior. “Sorry about that.” Jado looked up at him. “That was pretty rude towards you, wasn’t it?” He gave a sheepish grin with an apologetic frown, getting right back into his usual demeanor.

“You did insult my face, but all considered, it is justified.” The krawl acknowledged having understood Wright’s point.

“Mh.” Wright still had the face of someone who was apologizing. “I’ll try to have some faith in people overcoming their prejudices.” With that, he straightened his posture and leaned back over the table to overlook the papers. “Uhmm… where were we?”

Jado raked his brain for a second before responding. He put a finger under the paragraph they’d been going over. “My question. Water filtration – Why?”

Wright tried his best at explaining why humans need clear drinking water. Jado wondered if for him, as a krawl with water affinity, water purity held any significance.


	5. Scanner Teak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter! Scanner doesn't need many words to make an entrance
> 
> Beware of foul language from here on out. There's a high likelihood of it being thrown around whenever Scanner is present
> 
> EDIT: O btw you can look at my drawings of the guy here: https://cordate-chordata.tumblr.com/tagged/scanner-teak

The live announcement was displayed on all NPP screens that weren’t currently necessary for use. It was Commander Grant talking, unveiling a secret that’d been kept to only a portion of the staff until then. Beside the tall man stood an even taller person in NPP uniform, evidently alien, and the subject of the announcement.

Hands in his pockets, Scanner Teak stood among the crowd in front of the screens in the break room. While they didn’t have height in common, he was similar to the commander in a different way – his ever unchanging expression. Just like his superior had a face destined to be calm, collected, and unreadable, his own visage seemed to be drawn in a constant scowl. He wore a regular field officer’s uniform, almost identical to Rallen’s, while his disheveled hair was dark blue with light blue tips. He glared at the screen as he always glared at everything.

“As you can understand, we felt it necessary to withhold this information until we were entirely sure that making a krawl one of our assets would not prove to be a dangerous endeavor. I trust that all of you will keep a calm head about this.” The crowd Scanner stood in did largely stay calm. The worst of emotions was visible confusion. It was to be expected that the situation was largely the same across the NPP. “Starting today, Jado will move freely under the watch of Officer Rallen.” Grant gestured to Jado’s other side, where Rallen stood, hands folded behind his back. The redhead gave a nod. He was specifically asked to not say anything; all he was needed for was standing there. “A fully public announcement will follow shortly after this one to announce the present to other citizens. We will gauge reaction and if all goes well, we will eventually assign a partner Officer to Jado. Outside of krawl-driven risks, he will act as a mostly regular officer.” This decision rose from the fact that Jado couldn’t just be kept dilly-dallying whenever he wasn’t explicitly needed. There’d been several discussions between him and the commander on the topic. He wasn’t some tool to keep in a cabinet until use.

Scanner’s frown deepened at those words. Inside his head, the gears were spinning.

“That’s the end of the announcement. You can call in to ask questions now.” Grant finished. It didn’t take long until the first caller got through the line, and someone in Scanner’s room walked up the screen’s control panel as well. Whatever the questions were, Scanner blurred them out. He stared at the still visible Jado on screen, sizing him up for a moment longer, until he abruptly left the room.

People who knew Officer Teak, knew that it was hard to follow his line of logic sometimes.

-  
Grant had a lot of questions to go through. It was good that they didn’t fix a set time stamp for the general public announcement, as they would have run late on it for sure. They had to cut off the question section after a while and redirect people to call Grant’s assistants. In honesty, it was terrible planning for them to not expect so many questions, but the NPP didn’t usually make announcements like this that required a Q&A session. Grant told one assistant to write an FAQ for public access, then made the second announcement.

Rallen sighed before the camera was on them again, and exchanged glances with Jado. They were both very much thinking ‘Can I leave soon?’.

-  
A few days later, Rallen sat in the main NPP building’s lunch hall, Jado in tow. ‘Jado moving about freely under Rallen’s watch’ was a lot more of Rallen dragging Jado wherever he went, and not Jado going where he wanted. The krawl was okay with it for the time being. He didn’t know his way around in the first place.

Rallen had finished lunch and the two of them were just chatting idly, or at least trying to. While they managed good conversation a lot of the time, there was only so much you could talk about before you run out of topics when you’re at each other’s heels for the entire week. Jado didn’t need any of the food that was offered here. While he could eat it, he did better on inorganic and unrefined organic matter. Human food was too selectively bred and processed for what he was built to consume. He’d made it clear what he needed by that point and was provided with rations at his quarters, which no longer were the tiny white room, but instead an officer’s apartment.

A lot of curious glances were shot their way, which was to be expected. It wasn’t the first day after the announcement, but curiosity of course didn’t wane this quickly. At least so far there’d been no hostility directed at Jado.

At least, so far.

A blue-haired officer approached them. His walk was casual, hands in his pockets, but he made a determined beeline their way. “Hey. You.” He called harshly, halfway there.

Rallen turned, and grimaced. “Oh, please, no.” He muttered. The man came to a halt in front of them, looking at Jado. “Teak, go away.” Rallen said in a firm tone.

The other turned his head to look at him. “Piss off, fossil freak.” His voice was loud. People were looking.

Rallen glowered at him, but didn’t move. He also didn’t say anything. He had no idea how to talk to this guy. Teak turned to look back down on Jado sitting in front of him.

Jado exchanged glances with Rallen, but then looked up at the man, holding his stare. He’d learned to read humans’ expression during the time he’d spent on Kollin so far, and while their mannerisms were still new to him, he’d gotten acquainted pretty well. This guy, though, was the type he just couldn’t read. Teak was staring at him, holding eye contact without a change in his angry facial expression.

After an uncomfortably long stare-off in silence, the officer finally spoke. “You’ll be partnered with someone. It’ll be me.” It was hard to tell the intention behind his words. His tone was one of slight annoyance, but that was it. Jado didn’t know about anyone being chose as his partner yet. Did they pick one without his knowledge, and was the person pissed at being chosen? It seemed unlikely, but the only reason he could think of. The words were spoken like either a threat or accusation, but the words themselves didn’t make sense as either.

Jado ultimately didn’t react, he just stared back. Teak sized him up for a while longer, then left.

Rallen looked extremely weirded out, mouth open, an eyebrow raised. He stared after his colleague all the way until he’d left the room, then he looked at Jado. The krawl, who’d also been staring after their odd encounter, glanced at him as well. People around them stopped looking at the scene. They either returned to what they were doing beforehand or started mumbling to each other about what they’d just seen. Jado and Rallen sat in silence for a while, until the former spoke. “Who was that?”


End file.
